


east of the sun, west of the moon

by zealotarchaeologist



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Blindfolds, Body Worship, F/F, POV Second Person, Touching, harrow is having a weird time as usual., like it is sex but...without actual sex, this is definitely explicit but also barely explicit at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:01:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27552721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zealotarchaeologist/pseuds/zealotarchaeologist
Summary: The laws of this dream are simple, and you have become exceptionally good at following them. You cannot look at her. You cannot touch her. But that doesn’t mean you can’t imagine.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius, The Body | Alecto | The Girl in the Tomb/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 19
Kudos: 92





	east of the sun, west of the moon

**Author's Note:**

> writing in second person is so uncomfortable but for this book...it just feels right

You keep having this dream. About being on the shuttle again, traveling away from the Ninth.

You are alone this time, no pilot, no—cavalier, your brain resolves. The shutters are up, and the light of Dominicus colors the little space a harsh and painful white. Even through your veil, it stings to look out into the light. But you do. You must. You know what kind of dream this is.

The Body was not meant to be seen directly, you sometimes think. It is probably this sight that drove you mad. You would not change it for the world. She is meant to be glimpsed sidelong, or in the corners of your vision. Or as she is now, a shape behind your veil, no less radiant for it.

From that perfect silhouette alone, you know her. You would know her anywhere.

The laws of this dream are simple, and you have become exceptionally good at following them. You cannot look at her. You cannot touch her. This you know from many years of experience: try to do so, and the hallucination dissolves.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t imagine.

As intimately familiar as you are with your whole mess of flesh and blood and bone, you can vividly conjure the feeling as her shadow reaches out to you, her perfect hand coming to rest just the barest millimeter over the exposed skin of your shoulder. You are wearing nothing but your veil in this dream, and you’re sure that if you touched your own face you would find it unpainted.

Your cells bloom under the illusion. Your nerves fire wildly. It is that overwhelming, anticipatory prickling feeling—someone _about_ to touch you, but never closing the distance.

Her hand ghosts down, settling for a moment at your sternum. Lingering over the hollow there like she means to reach inside you. Your body responds with interest. You control your breathing just enough to avoid making contact by the rise and fall of your chest, but it is an effort, and you can feel your heart jackhammering away.

She withdraws, then, the shadowed outline of her disappearing from your sight, and you want to beg— _have I displeased you, beloved?_ But then you can see her again, in your periphery. You dare not turn to face her.

You can feel the phantom presence of it, her hand not-touching your back. That sensation gliding over your scapulae, lighter than air and yet somehow bone-deep. Like she’s chosen not to bother with such petty things as your skin at all and has instead aimed her touch deeper, where it really matters. You want her calcified inside you.

The weight of your wanting makes you shiver, violently, and you struggle to suppress your shaking. The Body’s slender hand drifts lightly down your back, one vertebra at a time. She treats each notch of your spine with the same dedication. Everywhere she near-touches is cold, not the cold of a corpse but deeper. The cold of a tomb, the cold of stone that will leech the warmth from a living body that lingers too long. From her it is soothing. Without her, you would be feverish.

Her movement slows even from this glacial pace as she reaches the base of your spine, her hand turning so you are forced to imagine the pressure of her palm rather than her fingers. And you’ll never know if it is an accident, a mistake of your unruly body’s shaking, or if she meant to do it—but she touches you.

Only for the barest instant. Just brief enough for you to picture, for you to really feel. Her dead and perfect hand pressed, for less than a half second, against your sacrum. She is there. For just a moment, she is present and real and touching you.

A black void opens up beneath your pubic bone. Not physiologically, of course—you’re well aware, obviously, of the actual processes of orgasm. But a black void opens up nonetheless, a blossoming absence that feels so good as to be unbearable. You may have screamed. You may have arched your spine back violently. It does not matter. What is happening to you is beyond physiological explanation. Warm salt water is licking its way over your thighs. It fills and submerges you, piece by piece. It bears you away.

The Body makes no move to catch you. Still you reach out in hope of her hand.

You let her tie the blindfold behind your head, because you are stupid. The room goes dark and indistinct, and that makes the delicate drag of her gilded hand down the back of your skull to the top of your spine even more vivid. Like she’s leaving a trail of bright gold.

Kneeling on the floor, shrouded in darkness, Ianthe’s rooms take on a soothing, familiar quality. Gone are the insipid colors, the wretched paintings. This would be a good enough reason as any to wear the blindfold, but you cannot bear that she might misunderstand your request. “My affections,” you start to repeat.

“—lie buried in the Locked Tomb, you debauched freak, I know.” She finishes for you, a little coldly. You try not to think about the fact that she remembered your precise phrasing. It doesn’t matter. Ianthe has agreed to do this for you. Not only because you asked, but because you promised to allow her some degree of indulgence.

Ianthe’s touch is gossamer. She traces the bone-tip of her index finger over the top of your shoulder, acromion down to humerus, one side and then the other. You feel the strange and horrible looseness of her power in your veins, moving your blood where she wants it. It resolves into a sudden heat in your cheeks, and lower, though you’ve only just started. It is an unpleasant and frankly dangerous thing, letting another Lyctor work on your body. But you could fight her off of you really needed. And besides. You asked her to touch you.

The distal phalanges slide down your clavicle, a glissando, lighting you up. The temperature of her fingertips is perfect. You hope if you could see beyond the blindfold you’d see your beloved watching.

With no other stimulus, Ianthe’s corpse-cool touches burn through you like fire on paper. When she drags her fingers up your other clavicle, you make a raw and animal noise. Inside you, she tugs on nerve endings where you’d never let her touch. Muscles flutter in your thighs. You kneel steady, your spine straight.

Her exposed metacarpals press lightly to the front of your neck. The phalanges of her thumb and forefinger nestle up under your jawline. Ever so gently. Just a reminder, just the principle of the thing. Ianthe would not need force to choke you. She could make you do it to yourself, from the inside. “No peeking,” she chides, though she knows you would never. You asked her to do this. You wanted.

The Body would not touch you like that—though you would have welcomed her to.

You keep having this nightmare. About being held.

The touch is strange and all wrong. It’s not the usual ghostly touch of your beloved. The hands are larger, warmer. These fingers press into your back, over your shoulders, exploratory—not hard, but horribly present. Overwhelming and impossible to ignore.

“Is this okay?” she asks, and it is not the voice of your beloved.

No, that’s not exactly right. It is not one of the voices that comes from the Body. But it is familiar, and warm, and you are surprised to find that it is, in fact, okay. Somehow, it is okay.

You nod a little, against her, feeling the vaguest outline of a face buried in your hair. Lips pressing once, briefly, over your cervical vertebrae.

Her thumb dips down the underside of your breast. This feels somehow expected—though the Body has never touched you like this. But she lingers there only a moment before cupping her hand over the curve of your ribs instead. Stroking back and forth, like she is trying to soothe an animal that might bolt.

You realize, then, she thinks your trembling must mean fear, must mean revulsion. And it does, but stronger than that is your sheer wanting, a desperation that makes you feel as though you might shake yourself apart if she doesn’t touch you more. Like you might even if she does.

Your body starts to turn towards her, instinctively, to arch into her hand or seek out her mouth. But she’s strong—she’s so strong, and she holds you steady with that one warm hand on your ribs before you can even see her.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she says in her low, unfamiliar voice. You recognize the injunction for what it is and so you move with her, let her ease you back onto your side, your back curved and pressing against her chest. Her fingers splay open and warm over your ribcage. If you were a normal human being, she could probably snap them. This is thrilling to you, in a strange and distant way.

She traces the shape of your side down, though on you this is less a curve than a flat plane, letting her fingers press into the slight divot of your waist. Like she’s attempting to memorize your anatomy by touch alone. And then curls her hand again, this time over your hip, thumb rubbing firm little circles into the stark shape of your iliac crest.

Your breathing is heavy. It is not the sharp, exquisite light-and-fire touch you’re used to. It is a slow conflagration, simmering from inside you, all your precious bones turned to coals. When you sigh or gasp at it, she laughs and you feel the vibration in your skull.

Then she slides her hand—that firm palm, those strong fingers—down the front of your thigh.

You keen out a sound to wake the dead.

“Easy, Nonagesimus,” she soothes. “Easy. I’ve got you.”

And she does. She does have you. She has you as her hand drifts to the side, stroking over your femur. She has you when she returns to your hip and pinches slightly just to make you jump. She has you when she brings her fingers to your inner thigh, drawing patterns over the sensitive and untouched skin. Every stroke makes you tremble. _One flesh, one end_ , she writes out, starting over every time you writhe too hard and make her lose her place. All the while her hand is steadily moving up, and up, her thumb pressing into the juncture of your thigh. You do not remember what you have done to be worthy of this kind of torture.

When she brushes against you, just barely, you cannot bear it anymore.

You twist like a spine being broken, so sudden and severe she doesn’t have time to hold you down, so desperate you are to look into the face of your beloved.

There is the messy impression of a skull. There are the Body’s golden eyes. And then you see nothing at all.

You wake up sobbing and choking on your own blood.


End file.
